Well much to my chagrin we are playing with all II versions of the strategies this week. Here are the following mechanics we are adding to last weeks "Interesting Game Variant" post.

We are adding a racial ban so after you roll to determine position you ban a race in roll order and then pick your position for the race/position draft.

So here is the sequence:

Each player gets a hand of systems and these are placed according to the normal game rules but without placing home systems yet.

Then we all roll

In roll order ban 1 race

In roll order choose spot in the race/home system placement draft

The player who is the snake in the draft is speaker

For example:

I roll highest and choose spot 1 in the draft. I choose to pick first so I get draft spot 1.

The board has 2 great home system spots, 2 average, and 2 bad ones. I choose one of the 2 great home system spots with my first pick.

I will have to wait until everyone else has picked position and race before I get to pick my race because it is a snaking draft.

We believe the banning will make the race picking portion of our draft more important because odds are most of the borderline overpowered races will be banned. That means you will likely choose from the very balanced middle of the road and maybe below balance races. We are also adding the 2 ground forces to the Xxcha for balancing.

During the course of building our variant we have had very heated discussions about the distant sun tiles.

Point:

I like them personally because I think the game is designed so the military races have an easier time at expansion. Also it seems to me as if generally the hex is half full. You have to get seriously unlucky such as a Norr player getting the random ground forces(flag icon) on a planet next to your home system. With no random tiles people like the Mentak with stasis capsules are overpowered in early game expansion. Most times the tiles are a benefit and I think they add a lot to the game.

Counterpoint:

When there are no tiles you focus on what the other player is going to do instead of making sure you have enough ground forces to take the biohazard planet, etc. For example last game we had a Mentak player toss a destroyer on a rival player's face-down artifact planet. The argument is that is less likely to happen when you have the tiles because you would devote more resources to taking the planets.

Any ideas or suggestions are very welcome! Ultimately we are trying to make the best most exciting experience possible for our 6-10hrs.

Shadowplay said:

Interesting idea, although if one person can put himself in a position to be last to ban and first to pick race, you might have a problem. If one of the more powerful races has yet to be banned, such a player could ban a middle race and take the last remaining power race. The only real way to prevent that is to ensure the best races get banned first, in decending order of power. Why not save yourselves some time and just remove all the races you feel are "too powerful" up front?

Shadowplay said:

In my experience most, if not all, of the DS tokens get taken out pretty early in the game, and then you're left with paying attention to what the opponents are doing. That may not hold true if you're using a non-standard galaxy setup though. Personally I like DS tokens, too. Taking neutral planets without DS tokens is just... boring. =P

I suppose things like ambushing an opponent's artifact planet before he gets there are less likely to happen when using DS tokens, but if you ask me that just makes it an even better sneak attack move! If you're the sort of player who wants to do stuff like that, I don't see why DS tokens should stop you. Send a destroyer off that way, use fighters to probe more of your own planets while you're waiting for the resources to build more GFs if you like. Your opponent will either ignore you because he's too busy dealing with his own DS tokens, or he'll counterattack and you can start taking his planets that have already been cleared of tokens. Either way, the pot gets stirred.

I can see the logic in the counterpoint you presented, but I think that has more to do with how the player thinks than anything mechanical about DS tokens. My response to that would be to stop yourself from thinking differently just because of DS tokens.

Here is the low-down on how the game went. We built the map and there were 2 great spots, 2 mediocre, and one that was terrible. I was again fortunate enough to roll high and again I chose position 1 in our draft. I chose to ban Yassril and picked the richest spot possible.

Races banned: Yssaril, Sol, Muat, L1z1x, and Jol-Nar. First race off the board was the Mentak picked by the snake(last person choosing race/position back to back). Second off the board was the Naalu, third was the Saar, fourth Hacan, and fith(me) picking the Sardak Norr. I was very excited because I've yet to play them and knew they could be very powerful in the variant we use.

I had amazing resources but was lacking influence in the begining which is extra bad when you're a giant scary +1 bug. Their heroes were a bit disappointing (admiral yay, general, and ANOTHER general wtf). Not that they should have Barack Obama diplomacy or Stephen Hawking scientists but surely they could have an agent(mesquito-ninja-bug perhaps?). They definitely seemed a bit slow to start and really do require automated defense turrets to go along with their Hylar goodness. I tech'd kind of hard with them because my resources were so plentiful. It helped me with objectives later on but in the end the Naalu won the day.

I got a bit crippled early because my Hacan neighbor decided to get cute and toss his whole fleet 2 hexes away from my home system on my dual planet hex next to mecatol. He was after technocrat and it became obvious so the races at large decided to take some of his other planets as well. Needless to say I had to unleash the beat-down and owned his fleet. The Mentak player decided to be a general annoyance to anyone near the center but eventually flew off on a tangent never to return to game relevance.

The Naalu player saved up his CC's getting leadership whenever possible and turtled a bit after some early losses. Eventually he was able to outlast everyone and then run with his fleet around the map completing a 2 point technocrat secret objective and a 3 point public objective on the same turn.

This variant did once again cause more conflict and ultimately was more satisfying than the original. An added bonus to the racial ban was that without the delaying races and with the assistance of a turn marker(ball being handed around to signify turn) our game finished in 6 hours. It was very nice to play the races we never choose and be done in that reasonable amount of time(we've had 11hr games before).

Peace,